Software Developer, Yorkshire

Somewhat lost in all the fuss about the BBC retiring its WMA internet radio streams is the fact that there are now high quality 320kbps streams for all BBC radio stations.

Apart from Radio 3, which has had a 320kbps stream for a while, the best quality it has been possible to listen to any BBC station in digitally has been 128kbps. These 128k streams have never sounded too good to my ears, especially through my Sonos system. To my knowledge, this is the first time it has been possible to listen to 6 Music in high fidelity in any format.

The new streams use the Apple developed HLS protocol, meaning you can listen to them simply by pasting the link into Safari. Another good way to listen to them is to use the VLC media player, which is available on pretty much any platform.

It is likely that these streams will only work from a UK-based IP address but I have not verified that.

Courtesy of user simoncn on the Linn forums, here are the HLS streams for the national stations: